Video Premiere: Imani Coppola Debuts 'Just Feels Good'

Imani Coppola began her career at the age of 18 with the release of her debut album Chupacabra, featuring the hit “Legend of a Cowgirl.” This led her to the mainstream music world, touring with the likes of the Lilith Fair. Coppola eventually turned her focus to composing for music and television, but also managed to find time to record a pair of solo albums. She is now back with her latest release, Hypocrites, released on July 21.

Yahoo Music is pleased to debut the video for her single “Just Feels Good” from the project, for fans to get a taste of her new music.

Photo: Nikolitsa Boutieros

“‘Just Feels Good’ was kind of a songwriting experiment where I aimed to use emojis in place of lyrics to fit the theme of the current emoji obsessed world,” Coppola explains of the song. “No, you can’t actually see the emojis in the song, but I worded the specific emoji act. For example, ‘I give you a thumbs up, a high five, I got my deuces out, I got a big bright smile.’

“The result turned out pretty cool. We heard Rachel Platten was interested in the song, so I delved deeper and developed the chorus a little more: ‘I got sunglasses on my happy face, I feel a hundred percent up in this place.’ She ended up passing on it, which is cool cause I dig the song a lot…it feels good to sing it myself.”

Coppola also elaborates on the video itself: “The video was not conceived at all. I only had a camera man, a shoot date, and a vague idea of wanting to be outdoors interacting with happy people. And then my friend Larry Ratso invited me to come to the Mermaid Parade with him at Coney Island. I had never been to this iconic New York parade so I was a little disappointed that I already had plans to shoot. But then it occurred to me that this would probably be the perfect place to get the footage I wanted for the video. Let’s crash the parade!

“So I invited a few friends the day of the shoot, decorated them a bit, and we set out to Coney Island in a torrential thunderstorm. Serendipitously the rain cleared by the time we arrived. The police let up the barricade for pedestrians to cross the street while the parade was on pause and Ratso subtly signaled for us to blend in with the rest of the mermaids and mermen as if we were supposed to be there. Nobody caught on, in fact the crowd seemed to love our little motley crew. It was exhilarating. We felt like little kids. The spirit was captured. Other than the rainy weather it was a perfect day. I don’t think it could’ve gone any better.”